SMEs to benefit from GH¢35m investment fund
The Venture Capital Trust Fund (VCTF) is committing GH¢35 million to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to scale up production, create jobs and export to the international market.
The funds were made possible through Mirepa Investment Advisors and Wangara Green Ventures to support SMEs in strategic sectors of the economy.
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The VCTF signed an investment agreement with the Mirepa Investment Advisors and Wangara Green Ventures.
This brings the capital deployment towards SME finance to GH¢60 million within two months with an intent to deploy an additional GH¢100 million by the end of the year.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of VCTF, Yaw Owusu-Brempong, signed on behalf of VCTF while the Managing Director of Mirepa Investment Advisors, Samuel Yeboah, and the Managing Director of Wangara Green Ventures, Ebenezer Aurthur, appended their signatures for their respective firms.
Satisfaction
At the signing ceremony yesterday in Accra, Mr Owusu-Brempong expressed his satisfaction with the agreement, noting that it would pave the way for the parties to work together to grow the venture capital ecosystem in the country.
“This is a very momentous event for the Trust Fund, and more importantly for the venture capital ecosystem in Ghana, and the crowning moment of many efforts by VCTF and other key stakeholders.
“Let me take this opportunity to once again thank the government for the support and recapitalisation of the Trust Fund under the Ghana Economic Transformation Project (GETP) through the World Bank,” he said.
He said the funding from the project had recapitalised the Trust Fund with $40 million to invest in both early stage and transformational sectors of the Ghanaian economy.
That, he said, was in addition to a technical assistance facility of $5 million which allowed the Trust Fund to design some very exciting programmes for the development of the VC ecosystem.
Support for SMEs
Mr Owusu-Brempong stated that over the next five years, VCTF intended to deploy GH¢1.5 billion to support SMEs.
With that amount, he said the VCTF planned to leverage about GH¢5 for every GH¢1 spent, thereby increasing the capital pool to SMEs to about GH¢7.5 billion.
He said that was an ambitious plan and called for all key stakeholders in the finance industry and other international agencies to partner the Trust Fund to make the plan a reality.
“We at VCTF will continue to support further development of the ecosystem through our technical assistance facility,” he added.
Venture capital ecosystem
The Director In-charge of the Financial Sector Division at the Ministry of Finance, Sampson Akligoh, said the venture capital ecosystem, still in its development stage in the country, was an area that needed to be prioritised as it provided alternative sources of financing required for early-stage businesses to thrive.
He said in October last year, industry players took a big step in establishing the Ghana Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (GVCA).
“The GVCA is to provide a strong voice for industry practitioners in stakeholder engagement and advocacy, drive the growth of the industry, bring legitimacy to its members and develop the capacity of industry players so they can safeguard investments and investors,” he said.